With regards to the invite list..We had same issue.. my mother/grandmother thought I should invite people that live in Arizona that I dont even know, but they are family. I said no because IF they were to come, its more $ I have to spend. Ugh. Big battle over that. They got an invite.

Same thing with friends of our parents. We don't know them at all but had to invite them. Our parents are paying for some of the wedding, but we're paying for about 1/3 of it and it devolved into, well if you (my fiance and I) don't want to pay for them we'll just give you X amount of dollars less and then we'll pay for their plates. So long and short we have 17 people on our list that we don't know at all.

Luckily my parents and my fiancee's parents are being very cool about the invite list. We told them, we have enough money to invite about 130 people in the hopes of about 100 come (we can afford 130, but would love for it to be around 100). The line HAD to be drawn somewhere in terms of family, and with such a large family on my and my fiancee's side, we had to draw the line at first cousins not being invited. So as far as family it'll be immediate family, aunts and uncles, and cousins that we grew up with (about 3 each).

Fire0nice228 wrote:With regards to the invite list..We had same issue.. my mother/grandmother thought I should invite people that live in Arizona that I dont even know, but they are family. I said no because IF they were to come, its more $ I have to spend. Ugh. Big battle over that. They got an invite.

Same thing with friends of our parents. We don't know them at all but had to invite them. Our parents are paying for some of the wedding, but we're paying for about 1/3 of it and it devolved into, well if you (my fiance and I) don't want to pay for them we'll just give you X amount of dollars less and then we'll pay for their plates. So long and short we have 17 people on our list that we don't know at all.

My grandma wanted all these people invited to our wedding as well (relatives that I either don't remember or haven't seen in 20 years). We didn't even ask, but she offered to pay for them if they came (which none of them did).

We are doing a buffet with fried chicken and roast beef and the sides and told ours they are welcome to enjoy the buffet after our guests have made their first pass through.

Not sure where they're gonna sit though.

As a former wedding photographer, I'd strongly encourage you to reconsider this. The photographer should get fed immediately after the bridal party, otherwise they're sitting around for an hour with nothing to do (who wants pics of their guests stuffing their faces?) and if you make them wait, by the time they do get fed, the bride and groom will be finished eating and ready to socialize (something the photographer will want to cover) so they either get to eat a fraction of their meal or not at all. At this point, they've probably been working for 6-8 hours without any break.

And please, please find them a place to sit. I always found it ridiculously rude to end up at the reception and find out that the bride and groom didn't have a seat for us. People don't believe it, but wedding photography is hard work. You're on your feet almost the entire day carrying equipment, etc. I must have shot at least 20 weddings where the bride and groom didn't take this into consideration and ended up standing for another 4 hours at the reception. It was back breaking. Almost as bad was being seated in another room and having to get up every 3 minutes to make sure I wasn't missing anything while I tried to pound down a meal like Kobayashi. That said, the photographer doesn't need to sit with your guests. A table in the corner was my preference.

Treat your photographer like a guest. They're with you virtually the entire day.

Last edited by Hockeynut! on Mon May 13, 2013 9:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

We are doing a buffet with fried chicken and roast beef and the sides and told ours they are welcome to enjoy the buffet after our guests have made their first pass through.

Not sure where they're gonna sit though.

As a former wedding photographer, I'd strongly encourage you to reconsider this. The photographer should get fed immediately after the bridal party, otherwise they're sitting around for an hour with nothing to do (who wants pics of their guests stuffing their faces?) and if you make them wait, by the time they do get fed, the bride and groom will be finished eating and ready to socialize (something the photographer will want to cover) so they either get to eat a fraction of their meal or not at all. At this point, they've probably been working for 6-8 hours without any break.

And please, please find them a place to sit. I always found it ridiculously rude to end up at the reception and find out that the bride and groom didn't have a seat for us. People don't believe it, but wedding photography is hard work. You're on your feet almost the entire day carrying equipment, etc. I must have shot at least 20 weddings where the bride and groom didn't take this into consideration and ended up standing for another 4 hours at the reception. It was back breaking. Almost as bad was being seated in another room and having to get up every 3 minutes to make sure I wasn't missing anything while I tried to pound down a meal like Kobayashi. That said, the photographer doesn't need to sit with your guests. A table in the corner was my preference.

Treat your photographer like a guest. They're with you virtually the entire day.

We will make a seat for them for sure, but tbh, for what photo/dj costs, if they wern't in some pain at the end of the night I'd be disappointed

We got our invitations through Vista Print/Groupon and they got delivered and not everything fits in the envelopes as we thought it would (and my fiance had called to make sure it would before we ordered) so now I'm dealing with this "catastrophe" today End of the day we gotta go buy some A9 envelopes to stick all the material in before sliding that package inside the mailing envelope (I had no idea what all went into this invitation stuff).

Haha. We stayed within our budget. I think we came in right around 8k or so all together for everything. Nothing on credit cards. Has about 125 at the wedding/reception. Mother-In-Law helped us out a ton, and my mom helped as well, plus what we put in. We also did alot of stuff ourselves(invitations/programs/center pieces/favors etc).

Church called earlier today.. had another wedding booked that they forgot to put on their books. Supposedly this other wedding should have been on the books for over a year. No idea how they caught this. I guess thankfully they did now instead of in september when the weddings are. So long and short they're asking us to accomodate even though we were in the book. Change date (really, you **** serious?!), or time, or location. So mad. We repeatedly asked for some type of contract or paperwork and they said they never did that...now they know why we asked.

Furthermore, the priest who screwed up and didn't put the other wedding on the books didn't call, he had his secretary call. And on top of that, they called my fiances mother instead of calling us directly, so we got this secondhand. Then we had to call the church and talk to someone. That crap really pisses me off. Man up and make the call yourself, and call us not a parent.

So I've got a fiance in tears, all of our invites printed and sitting on the table right infront of me, and its finals week at school. Just what we needed to deal with.

So tonight or tomorrow I'll be calling all of our people and double checking that they have us in their books and on the right date.

This thread is everything I don't like about traditional American weddings. At least I'll know what to look for before I start on mine (should I listen to my girlfriend's demands and propose by January).

That is true and even moreso its basically about throwing a big expensive party for some people you know, some you don't, and hope and pray that you get back in gifts and money what you put into it. Sometimes I wish I lived in a simpler time like back in the day the wedding was in the church the reception was tea and lemonade in the basement right after.

And yeah, I still very pissed. Fiance called church an the lady got her to talking about our school ending and all this off the subject stuff and I was like "FOCUS! be angry! Dont let her distract you from the fact that they're screwing us right now! How they gonna fix this?!"

nothing is settled yet but for sure someone is reimbursing us for the invitations, i'm going to make sure of that. Luckily, we are having a 'guest priest' come in from La Roche where my fiance went to undergrad, so this..person..that screwed up and couldnt man up and call isn't the one that is marrying us, its just his church (fiances hometown church) we are using.